Forget Me Not
by HedgieX
Summary: Nicki is frightened that Tom's death will mean he is forgotten, but that is before she realises that he is there in the stars and the forget-me-nots, in Waterloo Road and in his son Josh. Based on Series 8 Episode 30; these are the things that go through Nicki's mind as she tries to come to terms with losing a dear colleague, who was maybe also something more. Not a happy ending.


**FORGET ME NOT | WATERLOO ROAD**

**Hopefully this expresses all of my feelings about the last episode of series eight, as well as Nicki's. I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you're prepared for an angst-fest; I'm afraid there's no happy ending.**

**The parts in italics are taken from a poem called **_**Reach/Throw/Wade/Row**_** by Phoebe Stuckes. She's won the Foyle Young Poets award a few times, I think she's only a year older than me and yet her writing takes my breath away. Anyway, I think the lines of poetry fit in quite well if you imagine them as Tom's thoughts about Nicki during the story, although it may not make a lot of sense until the end. Equally, Christine's speech is taken from the real Waterloo Road episode; the rest is my own writing.**

**In memory of Tom Clarkson and everything he stood for.**

Tom Clarkson's features had always been gentle in life, and they were gentle too in death, his eyes were a soft blue under the stars, growing steadily softer. Instead of blood seeping out onto the tarmac, the life in his eyes was leaving him. Tom's eyes had always been so alive, it didn't seem right that they should die with him.

A sprinkling of forget-me-nots grew outside Nicki's parents' house, in the shade of the window ledge. As a little girl, she'd picked them and threaded them into her hair. She'd need to ask her father to cover them when she next visited; she couldn't see those flowers, the colour of Tom's eyes, thriving, when Tom's eyes would never glisten with amusement again.

Ever-professional, wasn't she? Even as her legs trembled, threatened to throw her to her knees, she managed to dial for an ambulance, and to force the muscles in her throat to contract so she could describe what had happened to the call operator. Thinking about the practicalities – the medical attention, covering the flowers – was her mindset, it was why she'd been born for the army.

_She is the class of crazy that inspires adoration._

Tom's head lolled to the side, his eyes were a beautiful blue and then they were gone. The children were crying, their grief was in the hopscotch painted on the playground and on the horizon, overwhelming, but rather than pain Nicki felt a curious lightness.

She knew it was the shock, knew the reality would hit her soon; the practical Nicki told herself these things over and over. There was a hollow inside of her, like her chest had been screwed up and she was choking on her lungs. It was ironic that those were the very organs supposed to control her breathing. Tom's eyes had died and yet his chest was shifting sharply as his heart continued to beat, not willing to believe the body it served was shutting down, pushing onwards as though it could revive him.

Nicki didn't want those forget-me-nots covered up. She wanted them to reach towards the sun, to outlive him, to outlive her even, to always be there and hold a little bit of the spirit that had always burst from Tom. He'd adored teaching, he'd been made for it like she'd been made for the army, his temperament and his genuine belief that no child was ever worthless. Nobody was ever past helping for Tom. It filled her with dread that the world had lost someone special, and yet nobody outside of Waterloo Road would ever know.

She would wear some of them in her hair, the flowers, for the funeral. So often the exact shade of loved ones' eyes left your mind as time passed after their death, however hard you tried you couldn't quite conjure the colour up, it was something your mind had locked away because it was too painful. The flowers would remind her. Forget-me-nots, there had never been a name more apt.

Nicki wanted to be beside him, she wanted to clutch Tom's hand and lean down and kiss his soft forehead. Grantly had slumped down in his wheelchair like the life had gone from him too; she supposed he wanted the same, to kneel down and breathe life into his dear friend. They'd often joked about being the only two left of the original Waterloo Road – "the good old days" – and now Tom had gone and Grantly was fading. Nicki detested changed, if being in the army was her strength then dealing with change was her downfall, but everything changed so very much.

_She stacks vices like bracelets, works herself into hysterics,_

She'd never liked Christine very much, for one reason or another, but now she saw that she'd found the strength to do what Nicki couldn't, to make Tom's final moments a little more bearable with whatever nothingnesses she was whispering to him as his chest finally surrendered and Tom Clarkson lay still.

Nicki was accustomed to gruesome death, the violence and the bullet wounds and the coursing adrenalin after a close shave. She understood patriotism and mourning a lost soldier, the poetry and the British flags to mark the greatest sacrifice. She could do detachment when it was like that, but she wasn't prepared for how grotesque it made her feel to see Tom like this, surrounded by those whose lives he'd turned around, looking so gentle in death.

The first fireworks exploded over their heads, beautiful arrows of purples and golds breaking up the darkness, contradicting the terror on the ground so extremely that it was all Nicki could do to press the tassles of her scarf into her mouth. Her sobs gathered inside of her and trickled down into the empty space her lungs had left when they'd constricted into a ball.

_Don't give her matches she will pinch them till her fingers scorch._

She had a Tom-shaped hole inside of her. It was filled with emptiness now, the emptiness already beginning to mutate into deep, deep sorrow. Sooner or later the top of the hole would begin to close up so the things inside couldn't be reached, and then the surface would look as though it had healed, but the pain would only ever dig deeper, underneath.

Things happened, and she stood there and watched them happen. Paramedics and police barged into the yard, pierced the serenity, spoke sardonically of the fireworks when they thought nobody from the school could hear them. She recognised their manners from her younger self; Nicki had dealt with terrible things by draping them in dry humour too.

Maggie and Audrey took charge for the children's sakes, they led them gently back away from the school and headed for the schoolhouse. Audrey's fingers were laid briefly on Nicki's arm as the huddle of students passed by, clinging to one another, seeking comfort blindly.

George encouraged the rest of the staff towards the school, and the entrance lights warmed up through grey to yellow to amber as Tom's colleagues stood disbelievingly together on the steps. Their faces were lit up, Sonya's thick black make-up was drying in smears on her chin. She wanted George to say something sexist about Sonya's weakness, just so one tiny thing remained unchanged, but instead she saw him reach out and pull her into his chest. He beckoned to Nicki but she turned her face away, she couldn't bear his kindness.

_I know she is gorgeous like a thunderstorm, but stop trying to hold her hand._

_Her heart is too heavy for you to lift._

She sat down on the wall outside the school entrance and clung to one of the banister poles. Officials clad in fluorescent jackets blustered around with burnt-out fireworks, medical equipment, rolls of blue and white cordon. Someone wrapped a foil blanket around her shoulders; she wished they would focus their efforts on Tom, he seemed not to concern them with his death. They wanted to care for the people who could still feel things.

A police officer bundled Kyle past her, he wasn't in handcuffs but the officer didn't look as though he'd been given orders to be gentle either. Why hadn't he? Rage burned inside of her but it wasn't rage at Kyle's sobbing form, it was rage at Simon, who followed so uselessly, so detachedly. He didn't belong here, he didn't understand. It was irrational to pile the blame onto his shoulders, but she needed to pile it somewhere, she needed to relieve herself of some of the crushing guilt.

"I didn't mean– He was, he was–" Kyle's protests, punctuated with sobs, cut through the darkening night. He saw Nicki and latched onto familiarity, "Miss–"

"It wasn't your fault." She said it for Tom.

"He was– and Josh–"

_Her pain is impossible, you can keep wrapping your arms around her but she'll never stay upright._

Her heart swelled with a new ache, she knew what this would do to Josh, the father and son had adored one another. So many ups and downs, and now this was a down neither of them could ever get back up from. His face, framed by the kind of curls that endeared him (whilst they looked ridiculous on Simon) to everyone, the way the tears would fall until he was hoarse with crying out for his daddy. His eyes so like Tom's, the forget-me-nots wouldn't be the only reminder.

"I'll tell him."

"I'm sorry, Nicki, I –" Simon began to tell Nicki as Kyle was manhandled into the police car, and then stopped like he saw how little she cared for his sympathy, genuine though it may have been. "I'll go with Kyle."

_Her stares are hospital corridors, passageways hiding chaos and anguish._

Finally they seemed to remember Tom, they scooped his body up onto a stretcher and smothered him in black material, they seemed to carry him with little more care than they might've a plank of wood towards a building site. She wanted to carry him herself, like they had when they'd removed the dead from the battlefield, cold sweat on their spines. The last thing they'd ever do for their friend, and so they wanted to do it well.

"Nicki," Christine said.

"The–" She suddenly couldn't remember the deputy head's name, didn't want to remember his name. Tom had been Waterloo Road's deputy, nobody else was fit for the role; even Nicki, with all her enthusiasm for the job, had paled into insignificance alongside Tom. Nobody could ever give their all greater than he had done. "He's gone with Kyle."

"They don't think his internal organs were damaged, so they think– they think Grantly can have the operation."

"Thinking about that now?"

Her voice came out cracked, like a weathered plant pot containing a shrub which eventually became too powerful and simply forced its way out through the china and caused the pot to crumble.

She pressed her scarf to her lips again. It smelled faintly of Rhiannon's perfume, from when she'd held the girl back earlier. She wished she could smell Tom, wished she had something physical to hold on to him by; already the memories were fading. But she had the forget-me-nots.

"Grantly's refusing, of course, but– it was what Tom wanted, he was a brave, brave man who wanted to put his life on the line for his friend, just like he put his life on the line for Kyle," Christine whispered, walking down the ramp from the school entrance slowly and sitting down on the wall beside Nicki, but not touching her, "He's on the organ donor register. If Grantly doesn't– they'll still do it, just for someone else."

Nicki knew what Christine was saying. Tom would have done what he could to save anyone, but if it was a choice between Grantly's life and a stranger, there was no question about where he would have focused his efforts. He was fiercely, fiercely loyal.

She'd confiscated a packet of cigarettes from a student lingering behind the bike sheds after school earlier. She could feel their bulk in her coat pocket. She gripped the edges of the box, comforted by the feel of something really, like it grounded her existence.

"Do you have a lighter?"

"You don't smoke."

"And you don't drink."

As soon as it was out of her mouth she knew it was unkind. She had no idea what Christine had gone through with her alcoholism, how hard it must have been for her to gradually wean herself off the thing that kept her going through depression. Tonight of all nights she deserved a drink, the poor woman must be feeling crushed with responsibility in the same way that Nicki felt crushed with emptiness and loss.

_'No, you can't have a cigarette.'_

Nicki had always hated the cloying taste, anyway, the smell; she vaguely remembered a conversation she'd had with Tom once about how uncool they'd both been, choking their way through their first and last ever cigarettes in their teens. Why did she only vaguely remember? You didn't hold onto these exchanges, you took it for granted that you'd be able to replace them with new memories of late-night chatter in the staff room, new heart-to-hearts over wine in the pub after a difficult day.

She wondered if Josh had a recording of Tom's voice somewhere, from an old karaoke session, perhaps. Nicki imagined he would have chosen something soppy, 'Rule the World' or 'We Are The Champions', songs everyone knew without really knowing they knew; they would have joined in, swaying their arms. The likelihood was that there'd be no such recording, Tom's voice would be just another thing lost to them.

"One sip. I had one sip," Christine murmured, "I poured the rest away."

"I didn't mean–"

Christine took a lighter from her pocket and pressed it into Nicki's hand. Her fingers, ending in rounded pinkish nails, curved gracefully; Nicki wondered if she played the piano. She didn't know whether Tom had ever played a musical instrument, whether he was a good cook (he'd once offered to make her dinner, but like so many things they'd never got round to it, always imagined they'd have time in the future) or maybe adept at DIY. She couldn't really see Tom Clarkson constructing a cardboard flat-pack box, let alone a wardrobe or a table.

The future. It was there and then it was not.

"I had one sip. You can have one puff." Christine spoke softly, and then she left Nicki's side and went across to a police officer whose epaulettes shone in the starlight, and marked him out as high-ranking. Nicki didn't envy her that, having to deal with the police and the staff and the students, having to hold everything together when there was nothing left to grasp.

_She lost the ring that I gave her; on ardent impulse I wanted to throw her a lifebelt._

She took a cigarette from the packet and lit it, then dropped it and ground it out with the heel of her boot without putting it to her lips. A scattering of fallen embers continued to dance for a moment, and then they died as quickly, as certainly, as the life had been extinguished from Tom's eyes.

_A reminder that she and I are washed up on the same shore._

The door slammed behind her and the practical Nicki turned to discover the cause. Grantly had wheeled himself out of the school entrance behind her and sat silently with his fingers threaded together on his knees, almost like he was praying.

"You'll catch your death out here," he told her, when it became clear she had nothing to say. Those were the first kind words she'd ever heard leave his thin, hard-to-please lips; like George's gesture before, it made her feel nauseous.

"He'd want you to have it."

"I know he would."

"Was Tom any good at DIY?"

Grantly gave a short, dry laugh. "Worse than any student I've ever had the displeasure of teaching. We took Bolton Smiley, and– oh, of course, you don't know the rest of them. Well, we took some of the rather more repulsive male students on an adventure; it was the deputy at the time's wondrous idea, it was supposed to prove to the world that they had something to offer."

Nicki understood truly for the first time why the past was such a comfort, because it was graspable in a way the present wasn't.

"Disastrous, of course. Deputy ended up in a neck brace. And Tom's attempts at putting up a tent were really something to behold."

She got up the ramp before her legs finally failed her. She fell onto her knees, and her head slipped down into Grantly's lap.

After his initial reaction (normality shone through with his surprised little outcry of 'ugh', like he were critiquing a poorly-written essay), he nursed her, stroked her hair back so her tears could run unobstructed down her face. She imagined it were Tom here, holding her to him, his beautiful eyes not leaving hers. The rim of Grantly's coat was surprisingly soft against her cheek when she laid it down, and his fingers were warm as Christine's.

_Being with her is like seeing Alice drink the vial,_

She lashed out at the ground with her fist, she could feel the nerves recoiling in her hand as she pounded the skin, grazed it. "He can't be dead, he can't."

_watching herself become vast and destructive._

Grantly said simply "He is," and then "Come inside, Maggie's making cocoa."

XxXxX

The hall was utterly silent when Christine stepped up to address her school. Nicki sat in the front row of the assembly audience, beside Audrey, whose eyelids were already damp with larger tears than Nicki had expected her eyes could produce. It was the practical Nicki who made this observation, the practical Nicki who had told the students to make sure their phones were turned off as they entered the hall, who'd fetched an extra chair for Maggie.

Nobody had expected Maggie to turn up, they'd all thought she'd be with Grantly, but then nobody questioned her decision either. She said the operation had gone well, they were expecting him to recover; it would give him a new lease of life. She said all of these things quietly, acutely conscious of how much the word 'life' hurt today.

"Teaching was never a job for him, it was a calling. A calling that drove him to put everything, every fibre, on the line for you every day. And that is how he died."

'Died', that hurt too. The less practical side of Nicki didn't want to accept that Tom had died quite yet, it wanted to be half-tensed, glancing towards the door, waiting for him to push it open a crack. He'd give Christine a lopsided smile by way of apology for diverting the pupils' attention, and she'd break off from what she was saying and make some sort of joke about the bad examples Mr Clarkson set at Waterloo Road.

"Risking his life to save a pupil. Doing the job he loved."

Only the practical side overruled this hope, in the way that reality always ultimately overrules fiction. Tom was dead, but Grantly was alive because of him, and in that way Tom would live on in Grantly as he lived on in the forget-me-nots.

"Mr Clarkson believed in each and every one of you," Christine continued, tilting her head backwards slightly like her tears were pinballs and she didn't want them to escape and dribble down her cheeks, "He always fought your corner, went that extra mile for you all."

Sometimes these things weren't true, people just said nice things because they didn't want to cause any upset, because they were old-fashioned and wouldn't speak ill of the dead. Nicki was wholly comforted by the knowledge that everything Christine was saying now was truthful, all the pride leaking out of her mouth, along with the pain, was pride Tom deserved.

Nicki had rung her parents last night, from the schoolhouse. She hadn't gone home, she didn't think she would have managed the journey; instead Maggie had found her some clean sheets and made up the spare bed in Rhiannon's room, and Nicki had held the young girl long into the night and promised her things would improve if only they were given time.

She'd laughed through her tears at her parents attempting to master speaker-phone. Her mother had told her how deeply sorry she was, her father had told her the forget-me-nots were blooming more beautiful than ever; for the first time in many, many years she'd felt homesick, or perhaps just sick at the great injustice of Tom's death. Nobody deserved to die less than he, she'd sobbed to them. Her father had said she could have some of the flowers to put in her hair.

"I guarantee as long as there's a school called Waterloo Road, Tom Clarkson will never be forgotten. Now it's up to you to keep his spirit alive. I ask you to honour him in what he stood for."

And Nicki believed that the students would, she really did.

"You work hard," Christine sniffed, "Look out for each other–"

It was like everything she requested was laid out in the hall in front of her; Harley had his arm around Rhiannon, Audrey was leaning around Nicki in an attempt to see whether Sonya had a tissue handy to smother her sobs with. This was what Tom had done to Waterloo Road, he'd brought them together, and that kind of thing didn't disintegrate because of death.

Death was insignificant beside friendship, she would see that later, but in the beginning it was hard. She brought a hand up to smear away her tears, and the still-raw grazes from where she'd hit the concrete yesterday felt rough against her cheek. It felt the way Grantly's fingers had as he'd held her last night, warm and old and reliable, like the stubble on a man's face when he hadn't shaved for a couple of days.

Tom's face would have felt like that. Nicki had been so frightened that she would forget him, but he was there in everything, he was there in the stars and the forget-me-nots, in rough skin and in Waterloo Road. He was there in his son.

"–and be the very best you can be."

She'd rung Josh last night, after she'd spoken to her parents. Christine (who'd turned out to be deeply understanding, far more so than Nicki had ever imagined she could be) had offered to be the one to break the news, but Nicki knew she had a duty to do it.

It had been the most horrible conversation of her life, Josh had cried in a way that was almost feral, and she'd felt an unconstrained urge to be with him. There was a perverted comfort in the fact that, however distressed Nicki felt, Josh felt worse. It would be the worst year of his life to date, she didn't doubt that, but he would come out of the other side. Last night he'd been silenced by grief, and Nicki had talked to him all the while, knowing her voice would be a small comfort: "Your father was a wonderful man, and he was proud of you."

After Christine's eulogy – and Nicki truly doubted there was dry eye in the entire hall; each student's tears glistened in the light filtering through the stained glass windows, hundreds of rainbows in tribute to a colourful man – champagne glasses filled with orange juice were laid out on tables, and Sonya carried plates of sausage rolls around the hall.

Nobody really wanted to celebrate (and many sausage rolls made soggy by Sonya's tears were discreetly slipped into the bin), but they held up their glasses and Christine said "To Tom", and his name was echoed loud and proud by the people of the school he'd loved.

Nicki, unable to stay any longer, drove down to her parents' house. Her hands went slack on the wheel as she thought of Tom; she was grateful for the quietness of the country roads, for the lack of opportunity for accidents. They hadn't been expecting her, but she found the spare key in the hanging basket in the porch and let herself into her childhood home.

In her bedroom, she found her old blue dress laid out on the bed, crease-free; her heart beat harder with love for her mother, and with realisation that Josh had lost the man who'd understood the most about him in the world. She sat down on the bed and cried.

_I cannot keep her safe;_

"Nic," her mother said softly from the doorway, and in her hands she cupped forget-me-nots. She curled her daughter's hair, strand by strand, until it fell in loose waves and caressed Nicki's shoulders, and then she tucked the forget-me-nots into the curls.

"I loved him, Mum."

"I know you did, love."

And Nicki stood at the mirror and looked at herself. The dress was beautiful, classic, it was decorated with pale lace around the sleeves and the hem. And the forget-me-nots, so delicate and blue, were Tom. Tom was with her.

_I cannot bear to watch her fold._

XxXxX


End file.
